An academic quarter is the quarter-hour discrepancy between the defined start time for a lecture or lesson and the actual starting time, at some universities in Europe and Israel. The quarter systemdates back to the days when the ringing of the church bell was the general method of time keeping. When the bell rang on the hour, students had 15 minutes to get to the lecture. Thus a lecture with a defined start time of 10:00 would start at 10:15. The opposite is also possible, thus a lecture with a start time of 10:00 can actually start at 9:45. Academic quarter exists to a varying extent in many universities, especially where the campus is spread out over a larger area, necessitating the need for fifteen minutes for the students to walk from one building to another between classes. In the German university system, lectures scheduled at a certain hour, with or without the addition "c.t.", usually start 15 minutes after the full hour. If this is not the case, usually "s.t." is added to indicate that the lecture will begin at the exact time.
Examples
At Uppsala University, the academic quarter was officially abolished in 1982 by Rector, and since then lectures are officially scheduled one quarter after the full hour, e.g. the scheduled starting time of morning lectures is 8:15. In the studentsocial life at Uppsala University and Lund University, a double-quarter also exists. At Uppsala, it refers to the thirty minutes between the full hour and the official time when a banquet or other semi-official party or sit-down dinner starts. During this half-hour, guests mingle and make sure they know where their seats are. At Lund, times are commonly stated meaning single-quartered during daytime and doubly-quartered in the evening after 6 pm and on weekends. Double-quarter means here that the event starts thirty minutes after the posted time. When a starting time is supposed to be exact, it is marked as prick, or prickprick for times after 18:00. At KTH the academic quarter is applied to lectures but not to labs. At UC Berkeley, classes generally start 10 minutes after the posted starting time. This is informally known as "Berkeley time". At the ETH Zurich, classes generally start 15 minutes before or after the posted starting time or on the exact time, depending on the campus on which the classes take place.
